The Gassengang
We thank the Petroleum Research Fund of the ACS for supporting our work through the Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) program. The grant was based upon the preliminary data collected by Madushani Dharmarwardana, and is a testament to her hard work (and will fund the rest of her PhD!)
Welcome Michael Luzuriaga to the group! Probably a Californian of some kind, Michael will work on projects that focus on integrating viral particles into advanced drug delivery technologies.
Madushani Dharmawardana‘s blog post about her trip to the ACA in Denver is up on the CCDC’s blog. She gives an uplifting story about her trip and that she’s looking forward to chairing a session at next year’s conference. Way to go Madushani!
Undergraduates Aditya Gudapati and Elizabeth Pham have done an amazing job in creating an online video showing how our undergrad team makes Qβ. Contextually, the production quality is outstanding and we are now in the process of dubbing it into Chinese and Viet so encourage and enable global participation in using VLPs as nanoscale platforms and to get even more young people involved in this line of research. Check it out below or on the Gassensmith Lab YouTube channel.
Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Fraser Stoddart, both mentors and friends of Jeremiah, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Here are a couple papers he published with both guys together. Jean-Pierre’s incredible creativity and child-like love for science and Fraser’s indomitable work ethic were excellent examples of how to lead a revolution in science. Also, congrats to Ben Feringa—an amazing chemist. (Featured image is a recruiting poster Jeremiah made for the group when he was a postdoc.)
Candace Benjamin has scored a grant to attend the 43rd annual conference of The National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) in Raleigh, North Carolina. She will presenting her preliminary work on photoactivation of viral capsids.
Dr. Jeremiah Gassensmith was invited to give a talk at the 2016 MOF YI symposium over the work the group has been doing with virus encapsulated MOF architectures.
We trapped the Tobacco Mosaic Virus in a Metal Organic Framework and published it in Angewandte! Inside the MOF, the virus become much more resilient against denaturation, even surviving boiling water and pure methanol solvent. After these harsh treatments, we were able to gently exfoliate the virus with EDTA to get the virus back. The effort was lead by first year graduate student Shaobo Li, who spent almost 18 months working out the conditions necessary to coat 100% of the virus inside the porous ZIF-8. Madushani Dharmarwardana found that the surface of the virus was still reactive, showing mass transport of small molecules through the pores. The Smaldone grouphelped with the physical characterization and the Chan lab lent us Ren and the PXRD.